Dungeon Overlord: My First SSS Gacha Summon Was a Yandere

SKRRIIIiii~

Kumoko was making her way down through the dungeon at a leisurely pace, Freya sprawled across her back, through corridors that had become unrecognizable.

Because Mei had taken her order very, very seriously.

There wasn’t a single bare stretch of wall left. Statues filled every alcove, Mycofoxes mid-sprint, a silkweaver with her legs spread wide, a life-sized Naïa holding her tray, and Freya herself a good ten times over, in poses each more heroic than the last. Stone display stands lined the corridors, some of them veined with mithrite that caught the light as you passed, and friezes ran above the doorways, recounting in detail scenes Freya recognized without difficulty, the famous siege of the dungeon among them.

"Compared to my other self, life around here is dull as anything..."

She pulled up her mana.

[ Mana: 10,000/10,000 ]

"Ah, so this is what wallowing in wealth feels like?"

Because yes, Freya had been sitting at the cap for a while now, incapable of spending as fast as she was taking in.

Her famous 1% faction cut had become downright ridiculous over time, since the other Dungeon Lords had all reached system level 3, which put them at 600 mana points a day, and therefore earned her the princely sum of 6 x 361.

Yes, yes, yes, you’re not dreaming, that came to a solid 2,166 mana points a day, and that was assuming not one of those 361 Dungeon Lords had any income beyond their Heart’s passive mana.

"Aaah, so boring..." she sighed, slumping a little further across Kumoko’s back.

"Where did the thrill from the early days go? Why am I stuck without managing to reach system level 4? It’s just absurdly boring."

She did have a theory about it, mind you, namely that level 4 probably required five buildings upgraded to level 2, and she was sitting at four.

That same system had likely been designed carefully enough that a dungeon’s owner would normally hit those five upgrades right around the time they’d met all the other conditions. Except in her case, between her sales on the inter-dungeon shop, the bodies she’d chained together, the 1% tied to her Overlord status and everything else, the gap had widened to the point of absurdity.

She was quite simply too boosted, and the system couldn’t keep up.

Or maybe it’s deliberate, to narrow my lead over the others?

Anyway, doesn’t change a thing, it’s just boring at the end of the day.

She thought, laying a hand against a wall of the Heart chamber.

"System, build the Cabinet of Wonders, please."

[ Spend 1000 mana points to designate the construction site and cause the materials needed for the Cabinet of Wonders to appear? ]

"Yes..."

The site appeared before her, along with the materials that came with it, which looked considerably more precious than anything she’d seen so far, without stirring so much as a flicker in her.

"Right, let’s not waste any more time. Summon the Warden of Wonders Mycofox as well."

[ Summon x1 Warden of Wonders Mycofox for 1000 mana points? ]

"Yes..."

And he appeared.

This one resembled none of the others. He stood upright, the same height as his fellows, but dressed in an immaculate white three-piece suit, complete with gloves and a bow tie, his posture perfectly straight and his paws clasped behind his back. And above all, something radiated from him that Freya had felt only once before, when she’d summoned Mei, that low, unmistakable sense of standing before someone it would be unwise to cross.

"Good."

She leaned down from Kumoko’s back, hand outstretched to pet him.

He dodged.

"Ohhh, aren’t you a little rebel."

She straightened up and patted the spot beside her. "Come on, get up here, at least until the room finishes building."

He leapt and landed beside her, immaculate.

And so began a contest of speed between the two, Freya multiplying her attempts and him dodging every one with the ease befitting his rank S, never once losing his composure or keeping his paws unclasped longer than strictly necessary.

After a dozen tries, she finally let her hand drop, out of breath.

"I see... you’re far too fast for me. I give up."

The Mycofox seemed to relax imperceptibly, unclasped his paws, and adjusted his bow tie with a satisfied little motion.

"Aha! Got you!"

Her hand shot out and caught him before he could react, and Freya pulled him against her, vigorously rubbing his head.

"You’ll learn that your mistress’s foremost quality is cunning."

He let out a "Kyu..." laced with unmistakable disappointment in himself.

She did not, however, give him a name, contrary to her usual habit.

Because she’d appointed two representatives, Kumoko on one side, who managed the silkweavers and named them herself, and Roku on the other, who managed the Mycofoxes.

This served two purposes. The first was to structure everything better and delegate it without having to handle it personally, which would make things vastly easier for her down the line, while letting her two managers accumulate experience of their own, all the more so since Naïa assisted them and oversaw the whole thing.

The second was considerably more personal.

Freya had pulled herself together before sinking into boredom-induced depression, obviously, but before that, she’d settled something internally. As with Kyū, naming every single one of her summons would do her no favors. She knew that going forward she would lose more and more of them, exactly as Aria had told her, and she couldn’t afford to grow personally attached to each and every summon, especially since their numbers kept growing and would become exponential in time.

So she’d established this rule, she would personally name only those who truly distinguished themselves, which they would likely come to see as a reward, and which might well push them to surpass themselves.

And on that fine resolution, while the offended Mycofox took advantage of her distraction to leap off the spider and vanish, she lifted her eyes to the ceiling.

"That same stone ceiling... always... always..."

"AAAAAAAAAAA!!!! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!"

And she started thrashing around on Kumoko’s back, pounding fists and heels against the carapace like a kid throwing herself on the floor in the middle of a shop, while the spider, for her part, carried on without so much as slowing down.

Then she stopped dead, out of breath, and lay still a long while, eyes fixed on that ceiling she knew by heart.

"Right. Decision made."

She stretched out at length across Kumoko’s shell, settled the back of her neck between two ridges, and closed her eyes.

"Let’s stop living for now, this body has absolutely nothing interesting left to do. A little hibernation while the room builds itself, and let’s focus as much of my senses as possible on the other Freya, the one who’s having fun."

Her breathing slowed, her body surrendered entirely to the sway of the spider still making her rounds through the corridors.

And so she tipped fully into what her replica was living.

A fly was circling her face, stubbornly, landing back on her cheek every time she waved it off, until it took to tracing wide loops around her head without ever quite deciding to leave for good.

"Tch..."

She swatted it away one last time, and the insect finally drifted off toward the window.

She was sitting on Aldric’s desk, one leg crossed over the other, while he occupied the chair beneath her.

"Anyway, as I was saying, the first step is a success. Playing fragile in front of your guards worked perfectly, but the real move is the rumor." She tapped the wood with her fingertips. "By now, the whole city knows a survivor from the village of Veille is under the young Paydragon’s protection."

A smile rose to her lips.

"The baron is going to start panicking in earnest."

And she burst out laughing all by herself, while Aldric stared straight ahead without sharing an ounce of the amusement.

"Are you certain he’ll act?"

"He’ll act. And if he drags his feet, we’ll push him into it, whatever it takes, don’t you worry about that."

Then she went on, in a markedly more serious tone.

"But above all, make absolutely sure you behave as though you’re plotting against the baron, and arrange things so that person sees it, understood?"

She slid down off the desk and laid one hand flat on it, leaning in until her face was level with his, and fixed her eyes on his, eyes that had nothing whatsoever in common with the frightened village girl’s from the garden.

[ Word of Greed skill activated. ]

"And never forget why we’re doing all of this, Aldric. Your sisters will grow up in a house that owes nothing to anyone, carrying a name people speak with respect again, and all of that rests entirely on what you do in the days ahead."

"I know, madam." His voice had steadied, and his eyes shone with a light he surely wouldn’t have recognized in himself. "They’ll have everything. They’ll have everything that was taken from us, and a great deal more besides."

"Good."

She straightened up, smoothed down her old village dress, and headed for the door.

Which she opened onto Amelia.

The girl stood there in the corridor, and Freya immediately dropped her head and pulled in her shoulders.

"G-good day, young miss..."

She hurried past her in short, quick steps without lifting her eyes, went up to her room to collect her suitcase, then left the manor.

After that she made for a bar, in a district the streets led steadily downward into, ending at an establishment with no sign wedged between two warehouses.

She stepped in, crossed the smoky room without a glance at the regulars, and leaned over the counter to murmur a few words to the barman, the exact phrase Aldric had taught her.

"I’m after a rare horse steak, but I’ve been told yours is overcooked."

The man stopped mid-motion, cloth still inside the glass, and looked her over from head to toe without his face betraying a thing.

"And who told you a thing like that?"

"A cousin passing through, two winters back."

The barman held her gaze a moment longer, then set the glass down on the counter.

"Ah, you’ve been misinformed. Come along with me, you can judge for yourself whether it suits you."

He lifted a trapdoor behind the bar and led her down a narrow staircase into a cellar, then, all the way at the back, toward a stone platform flanked by two pillars carved with runes.

The barman laid his palm against one of them, the runes lit up, and the platform began its descent.

It descended for a long time.

Then the walls drew apart, and everything opened up at once.

An immense hall stretched out before her, carved straight into the rock, so vast that the ceiling was lost in shadow despite the thousands of hanging lanterns. Entire avenues of stalls crisscrossed as far as the eye could see, with merchants hollering at passersby over a deafening racket, and you could find absolutely anything there, weapons, potions in questionable colors, grimoires, caged creatures, food stands giving off spiced aromas, and no end of things Freya wouldn’t even have known how to name.

Further along, gaming tables ringed by dense crowds, fights in a pit from which roars kept rising, and right at the back, bathed in reddish light, what could only be the pleasure district.

Everything the city above didn’t have, all that noise, all that trade and all that life, was down here, beneath her feet.

So these are the underworld.

A smile rose to her lips.